You have been so rude as to summon my wife to the
telephone and use bad language. Although she had told
you that she was prepared to forget this, the fact
nevertheless became known through her to Zinoviev and Kamenev.
I have no intention of forgetting so easily what has been
done against me, and it goes without saying that what
has been done against my wife I consider having been done
against me as well. I ask you, therefore, to think it over
whether you are prepared to withdraw what you have said
and to make your apologies, or whether you prefer that
relations between us should be broken
off.[1]

Notes

[1]A reference to the following fact. After Lenin, with the
permission of his doctors, had, on December 21, 1922, dictated a letter
to Trotsky on the foreign trade monopoly (see this volume,
Document 811), J. V. Stalin, whom a C.C. Plenum decision of
December 18 had made personally responsible for the observance of
the medical regimen ordered for Lenin, used offensive language
against Nadezhda Krupskaya and threatened to take the case to
the Control Commission for having taken down the said letter.
On December 23, 1922, Krupskaya sent Kamenev a letter asking
for protection from “the gross interference in my personal life,
offensive language and threats”.

Nadezhda Krupskaya apparently told Lenin of this fact in early
March 1923. Having learned about this Lenin dictated the
document here published.

Maria Ulyanova later wrote in a letter to the presidium of the
July (1926) Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the
Central Control Commission of the R.C.P.(B.), at which the question
had been raised by G. Y. Zinoviev, one of the leaders of the “new
opposition”, that Stalin had offered his apologies.